The Missing Link to Innovation and Inclusion

Social Media and the Currency of Empathy

What would you do if not one but two of your beloved friends were diagnosed with leukemia, each with 1 in 20,000 odds of finding a bone marrow donor who could save their lives?

This is not a theoretical example.

Recently in a Case Western Reserve University Masters of Finance Class, students debated whether social media is used more often as a tool for good or a catalyst for bad behavior: at best making the world better in some way, but sometimes a waste of time or even a driver of insecurity and/or narcissism (e.g., endlessly managing how one is perceived).

I can’t imagine a better illustration of social media as a force for good than what my friend and former McKinsey colleague Robert Chatwani and his friends did. Here is their remarkable story:Presented to Stanford GSB students as part of Prof. Jennifer Aaker’s class entitled “The Power of Social Technology”

Social media is probably the most powerful tool for good and innovation that we have today, if we leverage and steward a currency of empathy in the way we use it.